


All Just a Dream

by Djtmusings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Other, alt from end season 1, ghost impala, impala as entity, impala with winchester memories, impala!cas - Freeform, lizzie said so, machine intelligence, post modern literature
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-01-28 08:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12602712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djtmusings/pseuds/Djtmusings
Summary: This is a story of 'What ifs" set at the end of SPN Season 1/beginning of Season 2.- What if everything after the crash (seasons 2-12) was all just a dream - drawn from Winchester memories and subconscious?- What if Sam and Dean woke up to a world where only Season 1 is real (canon) and everything that happened after may or may NOT have any connection to reality?  (Who is and is not alive - or even exists - in this AU? How would the YED storyline progress?)- What if Castiel is not who/what they think? What if 'he' is the only one who knows what they 'dreamt' - and how much of it is real? And what if he/it has ulterior motives?- How would the guys cope with young bodies - and the cynicism of middle age? With a 2nd chance...clouded by 12 years of false memories? How would it affect hunting? Their mental/emotional stability? Their life choices?Reader comments encouraged - suggestions may sway/direct the story path...or not. It all depends on the whims of the unreliable narrator.





	All Just a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Where this came from: For Round 5 - Only a Dream of the Great Meta Scavenger Hunt (on Tumblr) we were challenged by @elizabethrobertajones to:
> 
> _Find yourself a break from the normal [SPN] narrative and tell how an episode/story arc/season/entire chunk of the show was in fact a story within a story or a dream within a dream or an unreliable narrator unreliably narrating._
> 
> I tried. I had this GREAT idea - I knew IMMEDIATELY how I wanted to answer this, but it Would. Not. Be. Meta. [It wanted to be a story. ](https://durenjtmusings.tumblr.com/post/156307423487/the-great-meta-scavenger-hunt-5-only-a-dream)So I wrote a short story about a dream instead. And then my brain said, "So, logically, what would happen when they woke up?"
> 
> And really...I don't know. I'm making this up as I go along. Hope you like the ride. Feel free to make suggestions. Tags may be added and rating may change as we go. You are warned.

********************************************************************

“Jesus Christ!”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Jesus _Christ!_ ”

“Yeah, I _know._ ”

“How are these guys even still alive?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know…shit, Kyle, help me with the collar on this one.”

“God! He’s got a lot of burns on his legs.”

“Yeah, this one’s got a few too, plus a concussion, and who knows how many internal injuries.”

“How long have they been out here?”

“Gail estimates between six to eight hours.”

“What! Holy _fuck_. They should be DEAD.”

“Yeah, well, part of that, we think, is that third guy over there.”

“What, trench coat dude?”

“Yeah, good Samaritan. Looks like he arrived to pull them from the wreck right about the time it caught fire. There are signs of CPR on both of them. They’ll owe him a big one for saving their lives.”

“What the hell? So why is he unconscious? Smoke inhalation? Knocked out by an explosion?”

“We have no idea. Gail can’t find a mark on him. He’s simply out cold, just like these guys. Everything’s stable – all three of them have a decent heart rate, fairly steady breathing, minimal blood loss…it’s like they’re on frickin’ life support or something.”

“Damn. These two were in the car, then? What about the truck driver?”

“The semi? Yeah, that’s how we found out about this. He showed up in town, out of his wits, babbling about smoke and fire and blood. Took the sheriff almost an hour to get some facts and a location out of him. No surprise, he also had a concussion and a dislocated shoulder.“

“And he walked to town? Holy hell, that’s like five miles. Explains the delay.”

“Yeah. We did have one DOA – over in the car. Pretty sure he was dead before the fire, tho”

“What the hell were they doing on this road anyway? What the hell was a SEMI doing on this road? No one takes this road since the interstate came in.”

“No idea. Not my problem. C’mon, help me get this one on the board. Choppers are like 10 minutes out. Gail wants ‘em all ready when they get here. Takin’ all three to the big city hospital.”

“Got it. Man these guys are lucky. Shame about the car, ‘tho. Looks like it was cherry.”

“If you go in for that kind of thing. I like ‘em small and fast, myself.”

************

Family. Family was everything. Family was her heart, her soul, her _life_. She would do anything for family. _Her_ family.

Her family was smaller now. She hadn’t been able to save them all. The evil things had _come_ for them right away, while she was still struggling to keep all three safe. She’d fought the things off, kept them from taking her favorite, but lost the oldest in the process. That had hurt. He’d been with her the longest, and she knew him the best. But then again, he had left her - _abandoned_ her even after the loss of the youngest. That had been a bleak time, when her family had narrowed down to just one. She’d worked hard to keep him safe and she had become _his_ favorite in return. Like her, he had wanted the family whole again; he’d worked hard to find them all, to make them understand. She’d been so _happy_ to have her family back together and now…and now _this._

It had been difficult, keeping them alive. When they struggled to wake, she'd _felt_ it as they screamed in pain - pure torture for her. She’d wrapped them in shared dreams, steadied them, kept them calm. She told them stories, gave them monsters to hunt in these dreams. Their minds did most of the work, drawing from favored memories. She had only to watch and nudge them at first, keeping them from the reality of the waking world. Things were not often easy in these dreams, just as they were not easy in life. Pain and anger, secrets and lies, loss and despair…these were what defined her family awake; they should define them in dreams as well.

As time passed, evil things _continued_ to try to take her family away. She fought them off again and again but these battles leaked into the dreams. As the stories became more complex, she had to pull ideas from deeper in both of their memories as well as from her own. Places she’d been, passengers she’d met, bits from the stories they’d told…but then there had been the fire. She was so very frightened. She couldn’t save them from the fire. She couldn’t save herself. She’d been so very, very lucky the stranger had come.

He’d saved her family. Pulled them from their places in her bosom and tended their wounds in nearby safety. He’d known what to do to keep the bodies breathing. When he’d tried to leave, however, she’d panicked. Thrown her _Self_ at him to make him stop - her core, her essence – desperate for him to stay. Then there had been a time of confusion and fear and pain. She wrestled with the man, fought for dominance in an environment completely foreign. The dreams had stopped and she’d almost lost her favorite again. She won out eventually, negotiated a temporary peace, a sharing of this new space. This soft and _messy_ container for her Self. Together she and the stranger worked to keep her family alive.

It had never occurred to her that she _could_ leave her body. Her container shaped who she was, her need for rhythm and travel and speed. But it was her family who gave her heart, who gave her life. She would do anything for them - anything to save them. She'd sacrifice her beloved container, sacrifice herself… even kill. At first, the partnership was easy; the stranger taught her many things about caring for flesh and blood and bone. But then he became unhappy,  relinquishing control and retreating to a far corner of his own mind. Thankful for his service, she had drawn him into the shared dreaming, providing him an important role. It was fascinating, for a time, to be able to draw on memories that were not family. The stories grew deep and rich. But the man did not stay quiet. He would gather his strength and suddenly attack, struggling for control. To hurt her he would strike out at her family through dreams and she would strike back. The dream stories grew wild then, frantic, and eventually the youngest’s life was threatened. She’d had to do the unthinkable. She’d lashed out and pushed and _pushed_ until the stranger was gone, until she alone inhabited the container.

That had been a strange time. The dreams had become almost absurd. She’d struggled with learning basics like pumping blood and breathing (lungs pulled open, relaxed - over and over and over again). She’d had to retreat from the dreams, remove her image, leaving her family to a story spinning out of control. When she’d adapted, she found her old body gone and her family in a new place. A place designed to care for the bodies, where she could focus on only the dreams while her family healed. Re-entering the dream story, she was surprised to find that the stranger, the one she had sacrificed for family, had become important – had become, in his own way, family himself. So she became two things in the dream, herself and the stranger. Both caring for her family.

Together, her two selves continued the stories, disturbed when difficulties arose in the healing. Time and again she fought off the evil things. No one would hurt her family. Non one would take them. No one, no thing.

It is easier now. The machines keep the bodies alive and her family is healing well. There is more _happy_ in the stories, more ease. Soon she will be able to let them go, to let them wake from the dreaming. Soon she will become awake herself, in a new container, a new body. That will be different. She will miss the simplicity of mechanical order and smooth speed. But it will not matter, really. For her family is her heart and soul. Without them, she would be _nothing_. When they _all_ wake, she will once again travel with them, protect them, and hunt with them. Because that is what families do. Hunt things. Save people. And sacrifice anything, _anything_ for each other.

 

*********************************************************

 

> _The variety in spectral manifestations is vast and not limited to human form. It is common for inanimate objects that are precious to an individual to become imbued with a portion of that individual’s essence or ‘soul energy’ over time. After death, these objects may be connected to the deceased spirit, forming an anchor to the mortal world. In the case of more complex machinery, the object itself may be able to become animate, carrying on its function under the influence of the deceased spirit, rather than that of mortal control. A special case is that of **vehicular manifestations** where the vehicle itself has been destroyed along with the driver. There are numerous anecdotal reports of ‘ghost cars’ or ‘phantom trucks’ (with or without a visible driver) roaming roads on errands ranging from benign to helpful to harmful. According to Masters (1946), it is believed that the care and connection between the mortal driver and vehicle over a significant length of time lead to an almost ‘shared soul’ situation which is able to ‘carry the vehicle’s essence beyond the grave.’ Researchers in the specific field of paranormal vehicular study refuse to speculate on what may happen in the case of an accident where such a ‘shared soul’ vehicle is destroyed, but the driver is not._
> 
> Dr. Victor Henricksen, professor of advanced paranormal theory, Berlin University
> 
>  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve always been fascinated by ghost stories, especially the idea of helpful ghosts and ‘resolvable’ ghosts. I’ve also always been a car chick - so ghost cars were/are like a way cool thing to me (Yeah, Christine was a fav). So when Supernatural kept pounding on the idea that favored objects can ‘tether’ a soul to the mortal world, I almost immediately developed an interesting headcannon that Baby could tether John, Sam, AND Dean (and now Mary too). And then my head ran off with this idea and said, “But Baby essentially *died* in that accident at the end of season 1…which means that Dean essentially *resurrected* her from the dead…well, now THAT has to have had some repercussions…” So given this lovely prompt, I immediately jumped to a series of What ifs [ detailed in this post ](https://durenjtmusings.tumblr.com/post/156399445202/the-great-meta-scavenger-hunt-round-five-i-love) (that turned into the prologue).
> 
> **Again, I encourage comments - your ideas may end up part of the story.**
> 
> Image credits: [GHOST CAR 1 FOR HARPERS BAZAAR, 1937](http://www.beetlesandhuxley.com/gallery/photojournalism/ghost-car-1-harpers-bazaar-1937.html)      [NORMAN PARKINSON (1913-1990)](http://www.beetlesandhuxley.com/artists/parkinson-norman-1913-1990.html)


End file.
